Indicators of human health in ecosystems: what do we measure?

Increasingly, scientists are being called upon to assist in the development of indicators for monitoring ecosystem health. For human health indicators , they may draw on environmental exposure, human morbidity/mortality or wel l-being and sustainability approaches. To improve the rigour of indicators, we propose six scientific criteria for indicator selection: (1) data avail ability, suitability and representativeness (of populations), (2) indicator validity (face, construct, predictive and convergent) and reliability; (3) indicator responsiveness to change; (4) indicator desegregation capability (across personal and community characteristics); (5) indicator comparabili ty (across populations and jurisdictions); and (6) indicator representative ness (across important dimensions of concern). We comment on our current ca pacity to adhere to such criteria with examples of measures of environmenta l exposure, human health and sustainability. We recognize the considerable work still required on documenting environment-human health relationships a nd on monitoring potential indicators in similar ways over time. Yet we arg ue that such work is essential in order for science to inform policy decisi ons which affect the health of ecosystems and human health. (C) 1998 Elsevi er Science B.V. All rights reserved.